


Boxes and Books

by likebunnies



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Books, Creepy, F/M, Ichabbie Halloween, Ichabbie Holloween, ichabbie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8439481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likebunnies/pseuds/likebunnies
Summary: Sometimes a book can change everything.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Ichabbie Halloween Weekend, I really wanted to do something that involved the idea of the movie The Babadook but didn’t involve Abbie and Crane directly in that world. I just wanted to write a story about a creepy book. So my Halloween fic, which isn’t even set on Halloween, is about a creepy book. And the things that happen because of it.

The book had been in the archives for a few days before Abbie even noticed it. Of course, there were a lot of books that were always coming and going and being shuffled around but this particular book was far newer than most that Crane used for his research. It was not bound in antiquated leather but was glossy and modern, like a picture book from the children’s section of the bookstore.

After she first spotted the book, it was in a different place every time she stopped by the archives. Abbie assumed Crane was using it to get to the heart of some vaguely supernatural problem or concern or maybe just to catch up on current children’s literature. No one knew what might be coming their way next. Everything had been quiet in Sleepy Hollow on the apocalypse front for a few months and Crane was working hard to figure out what the sixth tribulation might be while Abbie spent her days going after more average criminals.

None of their usual sources had led to any suggestions about what they might be facing the next time evil came to Sleepy Hollow. She figured he was looking into something newer than the tooth fairy. Something with dark illustrations and very few words.

Something that was decidedly weird.

She flipped through the book and didn’t like it. It felt odd… like it had a presence of its own. She understood that any item they ran across could be like that but this was the first book that she touched that felt like it was touching her back, like tiny tendrils were reaching up her arms and trying to get inside her head. As if it was reading her as much as she was reading it. Or what there was in it to read. The pictures were all ink drawings with very little color. A shock or red here and there but that was it.

She set it back down on the table when Crane opened the door and came into the room. He smiled, delighted at the doughnuts she has purchased for him and soon was teasing her with an offer of the last bite of croissant.

The book was completely forgotten.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“What in the hell is that creepy looking book and why did you even bring it home?” Abbie asked. She was on one side of the kitchen counter and Crane was on the other, starting his nightly dinner prep. The book was between them, untouched as of yet.

“I… didn’t bring it home, Lieutenant. I thought you did.”

“No. Where did it come from? I mean, before it was in the archives. Where did you get it from. The bookstore?”

“I have no clue from whence it came. It arrived by post the other day. I assumed you ordered it from the Amazon,” Crane said. He picked up the book off of the counter and fell still.

“No, not me. It’s a big no on haunted houses and a big no on creepy books for kids. Well, books that are creepier than the usual ones around here,” Abbie said, flipping through the pages of the tome. “Or books with clowns. I hate books with clowns.”

“I’ll let Mr. King know. But for now, this is a mystery we need to solve. Was Miss Jenny here today? Did she bring it along with her?” Crane asked. He looked at each page, his brow furrowing in concentration. He got to the spread in the center of the book and slammed it shut with such vigor, it caused Abbie to jump. “What a deplorable book! I have never seen the like of it before!”

“Yeah, it’s creepy but it’s not that bad…” Abbie said, taking it from him. Once again, she could feel something. It wasn’t normal.

“Did you even look at it? The one picture is… I don’t even want to think about it,” he said, turning away from her, arms crossed in a manner that was very unlike him. He slowly bounced up on down on the balls of his feet as if he was trying to escape the image now in his head in any way possible.

Abbie didn’t remember anything that horrible in it. Sure, the art was bleak and a little bit mature considering it could be a kid’s book but nothing that would make Crane act like this. The two of them most definitely had seen worse than anything that could be in this book.

She looked at it again, flipping to the center of the book. It showed a lonely figure standing at the edge of a cliff, looking unsure of which way to go. In a gown of white, the woman looked like she had gotten lost on the way to her wedding. She stared out over the dark and turbulent waters below, trying to decide whether to jump and end all her years of solitude or to turn around and live with being alone…

Now Abbie slammed the book shut. She was really reading way too much into a simple illustration. Crane had pulled himself together and was now going between chopping vegetables and stirring a sauce. How long had she been staring at that book? It couldn’t have been too long. Trying to shake the fog from her head, she put it back on the counter top. Tomorrow she would get rid of it since it meant nothing to either of them.

But for now, she poured them both a glass of wine and enjoyed the garlicky aroma of their forthcoming meal.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

A week had passed when Abbie found the book again. She was sure she had thrown in away but here it was, in the backseat of her SUV. Had Crane retrieved it from the trash? That didn’t seem likely considering his reaction to it the last time.

She tossed it further back into the car and would ask him later. It was such a strange thing. Once it was out of her presence, it was like it never had existed in the first place but then it would just show up again. And again.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“No, I didn’t save that book from the landfill in which it belongs,” Crane said. Another week had passed and they were putting groceries into the back of the car when she found it again under her climbing gear. She and Jenny had just gone rock wall climbing over the past weekend and she was sure the book hadn’t been there, under her backpack.

If it had, she would have asked Jenny about it. As it stood, she spent the whole day with her sister without thinking about that book once.

“Are you certain?” Abbie asked. She picked up the book and flipped through it. It might have been the stress from a busy week at work or the fact that she had been drinking wine the last time she looked at its pages, but something was different. Maybe? She couldn’t be sure. The woman in the center looked closer to the edge. Abbie hoped this wasn’t another case of artwork coming to life but rather was her overactive imagination. Or the fact that she had just gotten out of the grocery store, which was never her favorite place to be. Crane enjoyed it so she went along… also so she could prevent him from spending the whole food budget on some new olive oil concoction or strange new mushroom hybrid.

“I’m very certain, Lieutenant.”

He took the book from her and tossed it into the shopping cart, leaving it there in the parking lot as they both got into the car and drove away.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Time went by as it usually does, one month becoming the next. Abbie continued to get things done at the FBI. Crane took care of the tour groups at the historical archives and did some history tutoring for the local college. It was during this quiet break between tribulations that they slipped from being partners, friends, and Witnesses to being all those things but also lovers. It just happened, like spring changing into summer. They went from spending evenings on the couch together, watching cooking shows, and then saying goodnight as they went off to their own beds. Then one quiet Friday night, after a few more than the usual number of glasses of wine, an evening on couch turned into a night in her bed. Then the whole weekend in her bed. And other places.

It was now their bed and their room and he had taken over one of the bedside tables as his own. He was putting something away in the bottom drawer when he suddenly sat up in bed, pulling the blankets off of Abbie as he did so.

“Abbie, is this some sort of joke? Am I being punk’d?” Crane asked. Abbie had been enjoying a lazy Sunday morning and was fumbling to get her blankets back over her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, rolling over and trying to figure out what he was asking.

“This book!” he said, setting it between them.

“Wait? What? You left that in a parking lot months ago. I didn’t go back and get it and I certainly didn’t order another one from…” Abbie said, forgetting what she was going to say once she picked it up. Like the other times, she felt odd holding it. Cold, like unhappiness was seeping through her skin from her fingertips, rapidly replacing the warmth she had just been blanketed in a few moments ago. Instead of tossing it aside, she flipped through it to see if it was indeed the same book.

It was hard to recall everything about it. Her thoughts were getting foggy as she got to the pages in the center. The woman was still there, on the cliff, but somehow different. Her loneliness was more of a fear now… fear of losing everything and not just afraid of being alone.

Abbie wasn’t sure why she thought these things. There were no words on the two pages that would indicate anything like that. She turned more pages but it was simply growing more puzzling. Crane pulled the book out of her hands and tossed it onto the floor.

“Crane! What are you doing? We’re going to have to figure out how that thing keeps showing up,” Abbie said, retrieving the book from the floor.

“I don’t know how you can stand to look at it. I have seen a lot of evil in my day and I have seen war and death first hand but that too painful. It’s like someone is watching us. Like they want to remind me of the worst day of my life,” Crane said.

“What are you talking about? It’s just a book with a bunch of dreary ink drawings,” Abbie said, feeling herself getting drawn into the book once more. “So sad…”

“Sad? Abbie, it’s horrific. The images are frightening in their detail. They go beyond dreary,” Crane said, taking the book from her again and holding up a page for her to examine.

“That’s a drawing of a sad looking woman standing near a church. Hardly horrific,” Abbie said. Crane turned the book around and looked at the page and then looked at her.

“What are you looking at? In this picture… this drawing… it shows you… dying,” Crane said, looking at it again and looking away as quickly as he could. “It’s gruesome and in such detail. The other pages show other things. Horrible things, Abbie.”

“This page is an illustration of a woman in a simple gown outside of a church in a family cemetery. Looks like it could be somewhere in England but it is certainly not around here so I don’t know what you’re looking at. Maybe you need to have your eyes examined. It’s been a while,” Abbie said, pointing to the drawing, her finger tapping on the woman’s face. It was plain as day to her. She had no idea how he could take that to mean her death. Art was certainly open for interpretation but that was going pretty far.

He looked at her incredulously, an eyebrow arching up. “My eyes are perfect… perhaps I will eventually need some reading glasses for I am several centuries old, after all. But even taking that into consideration, that’s a drawing of you dying. Painfully. And I can’t save you.”

“It’s really not.”

Neither of them wanted to touch the book again but it couldn’t remain in the bed between them.

“I usually find the act of burning a book to be abhorrent but I think in this case, it might be necessary,” Crane said.

“Agreed,” Abbie said. “Masonic cell? I’ll bring the book.”

“And I’ll get the blowtorch,” Crane said. “Oh, we should call Miss Jenny! She’ll enjoy this!”

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Abbie just stood there, silent and staring. It had been two months since they had a book burning in the Masonic cell. There was nothing left when they were done but a pile of ash. She watched Crane carefully sweep that up and dispose of it. It would be one thing if her mind was playing tricks on her or if she and Crane we’re having a good old ‘folie a deux’ but Jenny had been there. She agreed the book was creepy and needed to go. She helped torch it. Three of them couldn’t have imagined the whole thing.

Yet here the book was, sitting on her front porch swing as if someone had just been reading it a few minutes ago. The porch was even swinging gently even though there was no breeze.

“Crane? Can you come here?” she called through the front door.

“Is something wrong, Lieutenant? Need help… oh.”

He stepped out of the door and onto the porch, wiping his hands on the apron he was wearing. The two of the them stared at the book.

“I’m guessing you weren’t just out here reading that thing,” Abbie said.

“You guessed correctly. How… why… when?”

“All good questions. Fire didn’t work. Hell, Crane… fire in the Masonic cell didn’t work. What are we going to do next?” Abbie asked.

“Lead lined coffin dropped in the river?” he asked. Neither of them made a move toward the book, instead they just watched it swing. It was in Crane’s favorite spot, almost mocking him. But it was only a book. Books didn’t mock people… maybe with their words but not just with their physical form. It was just an object.

An object that with the correct dashes and strokes of ink on paper, could be filled with anything. It could be haunting or wonderful or both considering different tastes in literature. But books didn’t just up and haunt people on their own.

“Even if it is a different copy, because it has to be, right? Even if it is, who is doing this? It’s creepy but it’s not dangerous creepy. Why would someone go to such lengths?” Abbie asked.

“Here, take my tufted mittens and retrieve it,” Crane said, handing Abbie his oven mitts. “Place it in the garage… not the house. We’ll decided what to do with it on the morrow,” Crane said. Abbie sighed. The book made her feel pretty lousy but for him to not want to ever handle it again… she couldn’t imagine.

“We’re going to figure out how to nip this in the bud and not just keep destroying it when it shows up,” Abbie said. She put on the oven mitts and picked up the book. Even through the thick fabric, she could feel the sadness as it slowly washed through her. She walked around the house and left it in the garage, appreciating the warmth she soon felt sipping a glass of wine while Crane served her dinner.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“What book?” Jenny asked as Abbie explained what they were going to try to do.

“What do you mean by that? You know what book. That one we torched a few weeks ago in the Masonic cell,” Abbie said. She was calling her sister from work, hoping Jenny could go help Crane come up with some more ideas on how to get rid of this thing for good.

“Abbie, seriously… what book?”

“Jennifer Mills, if I find out you’ve been behind this whole thing… you’re going to be sorry,” Abbie said in frustration. Her day had been tough enough already and something her unit was working on for months completely went to hell before the sun even made its way into the morning sky.

“Calm down. I don’t know what book you’re talking about but I’ll go to the archives and help Crane out after my shift. I should get there around 4 p.m., okay? I’ll let you know what is going on,” Jenny said.

“Okay, okay. Maybe you’ll remember it when you see it. I’ll try to get there as soon as I can,” Abbie said, ending the call with her sister.

Why would Jenny go through all of this trouble to scare her with a book? It was ridiculous, after everything they had been through, but it was only logical thing that she could think of. Not that logic ever made much of a difference in Sleepy Hollow.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“What did you and Jenny decide to do with that book?” Abbie said, crawling into bed with Crane. It was well after midnight before she could get out of the office and home, and he was already curled up and sleeping on his side of the bed.

He rolled over and snuggled in close, wrapping an arm over her, his warm hand on her abdomen.

“What book?” he asked.

“No! Not you, too!” Abbie said, kicking him playfully under the covers.

“No, Abbie… what book?”

“THE BOOK!” Abbie exclaimed, turning over to see his face. He had to be kidding, right?

“I see a lot of books every day… Jenny stopped by the archives but she never mentioned a book,” Crane said, deadly serious. If he was lying to her, he was one hell of an actor because nothing on his face indicated that he knew what she was talking about.

Abbie scurried out of the bed and started putting her clothes back on.

“Come on, get up. We’re going to the archives. I’m going to show you where I left the book when I dropped it off there this morning,” she said. If he was playing some sort of joke on her, surely he wouldn’t make her drive all the way to the archives at this hour to show him the book they had just seen together last night.

He rolled off of his side of the bed and started getting dressed, too. Was she going crazy? Was this book making her crazy? Why wasn’t it making him crazy, too? They both had been in contact with it. It was going to have to be destroyed. Again. And hopefully this time, it stayed destroyed.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“What are you and Jenny up to? I put the book right here this morning. You were with me when I did it. Now you’re claiming you never even saw the book ever. Not the night before. Not in the bedroom. Not at the grocery store,” Abbie said, her frustration level climbing higher and higher every minute.

“Abbie… I promise you that I do not know what book you misplaced. Miss Jenny and I are certainly not behind any grand scheme. Besides, you know me too well. How would I be able to go so long without confessing something like that?” Crane asked.

He seemed so sincere. Jenny had sounded confused twice now today. Abbie was truly losing her mind.

“Help me look for it. It has got to be here somewhere!” Abbie said, moving papers and other books around on all the desks. Crane tried to help, holding up several books and asking of it was the one. None of them were. It was gone. The book was nowhere to be found. It had even erased itself from the memories of the people closest to her.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“Oh, Agent Mills… that book you requested also came in yesterday,” Emily, the latest proprietor of the bookstore said excitedly. “I haven’t seen one of these in years!”

“What book?” Abbie asked. She hadn’t made any requests here for months. Crane sipped his tea and continued to look at the spines of the books he had requested just last week. He looked up at Abbie, shrugged his shoulders, and started reading the book on top of his pile.

“Here you go. Mint condition and everything.”

Abbie looked at the book as it was slid across the counter toward her.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Oh, no! Not that book again!” Crane said. Abbie whipped around in his direction, sure to catch him smiling about some joke they were all playing on her. He wasn’t smiling but was moving away from book as quickly as he could.

“What… is there a problem? It is the book you asked for, isn’t it, Agent?” Emily asked.

“No! I have never asked for this book,” Abbie said, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose, trying to maintain a sense of calm. It wasn’t working.

“I’ll send it back immediately. Let me get the paperwork…” she said, scurrying to the desk covered in bills and requests and teetering piles of books. “That’s funny. I can’t find a return address on it. I’m sure it was here. What would you like me to do with it? I can place it up for sale on my on-line book auction. Try and recoup some of the money.”

“No, no… we’ll take it,” Abbie said. She picked up the book, looking at the center panel again. It was all the same once again. A sense of dread and loneliness. A drawing that was empty and hopeless. Crane looking over her shoulder and cringing away immediately.

This was going to end now.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“What do you see?” Abbie asked, holding up the book. Crane stopped cooking for a second and looked up. His eyes wouldn’t look at the book but would only meet her own. He wouldn’t even take a peek at the page once more.

“The moment of my biggest failure. The moment I lost everything. I am nothing without you, Abbie,” he said.

“What do you mean… I’m right here. I always have been,” Abbie said, turning the book toward her again. It was bleak. Lonely. It made her feel cold and lost. But it was just a woman near a cliff. Or a woman in a church yard. It was always just some lost, lonely woman. Abbie wasn’t lost and with Crane, she wasn’t lonely.

Abbie looked up and Crane was gone. She still had the book in her hand but he was… just gone. The sun was no longer shining through the windows. The kitchen had been cleaned up and she felt full, as if she had finished a hearty meal. Crane must have gone to bed and she came back to the book?

That was the only thing that made sense. Except none of this made sense.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“You’ll have to jump,” he said. He was sitting in his chair, playing video games, and for a second, Abbie thought he was talking to one of the other players over the microphone. But he didn’t even have it on. He had paused the game and was just staring at the screen.

“What?”

“When you find the cliffs, you will have to jump. In the picture, you always just stand there. You have to jump, Abbie. It’s the only way out.”

“Crane, what are you talking about? That book? I know the book but those are just drawings. I have no idea where those cliffs might be and jumping off of them hardly seems to be the answer,” Abbie said. The book had been gone for a few weeks, locked up in the tunnels under Sleepy Hollow. It hadn’t come back and no one talked about it. She wasn’t even sure they remembered it.

“Find the cliffs and find your way back to me. It’s the only way,” he said. And as if nothing weird had just happened, he un-paused the game and started playing, ranting away at the screen in his normal fashion.

How was she ever going to find those exact cliffs? How many places on earth were there just like that? And why would she jump to her certain death anyway?

This book was messing with her again. That had to be it.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Crane somehow talked Abbie into splurging on a trip to see his ancestral home in Scotland. They had spent several days in England before traveling north and stopping in a tiny village that the Cranes had at one time called home.

The house would have been lovely in its day. A large manor with everything anyone who ever watched Downton Abbey had dreams about. Except for the years of neglect and decay. Like many such homes, the upkeep got to be too much and the ones that weren’t opened for tourism turned into… this. 

The bones of it were still magnificent and Crane dragged her to the parts that weren’t boarded up or bricked in. This included the family crypt.

“Where is yours?” Abbie asked.

“What do you mean where is mine? I didn’t die here. You know that,” Crane said.

“But you found the stone tablet here. The one with the symbol and the drawing that started… what did that start? One of the tribulations, right?” Abbie asked. Crane held the burning torch so she could examine all the crypts herself. None of them belonged to Ichabod Crane.

“I told you,” Crane said, his face now dappled in firelight.

“I don’t understand,” Abbie said. She was getting very tired of not understanding things. 

“I didn’t die here. I had to show you that not everything is real. Not even death. You didn’t really die there in Sleepy Hollow. Not like the book keeps showing me,” he said. The book was suddenly in his hand and Abbie stepped away from him.

“How did that get here?” Abbie asked.

“This book… me. None of us are what we really think,” Crane said. What the hell? Maybe he had breathed in a few too many cobwebs or had one too many pints at the pub earlier. “I don’t know how else to tell you but death isn’t always what it seems. I am a living example of that.”

“I know… but that was Katrina and her coven… that was witchcraft. Despite what Grace Dixon led me to believe, I never became any sort of witch,” Abbie said.

“That doesn’t mean witchcraft wasn’t involved. Witchcraft of an older sort… as old as the world itself. As old as the gods. A witchcraft hidden in hope,” Crane added. “I’ll show you. Do you trust me?”

“Crane…”

“Follow me. Please, Abbie. Please…”

He tossed aside the book and took her by the hand, leading her out of the crypt and across the sprawling and overgrown lawn, holding the torch in front of them. She didn’t know where he was leading her, all she knew was she felt incredibly sad but she wasn’t sure about what. Sad and tired. And unsure. She kept getting caught up in thorns and thistles but tried to keep up with him. She had no choice, he was pulling at her so hard.

“Can’t we do this tomorrow, Crane? It’s getting dark and I’m so tired,” Abbie said as Crane practically dragged her along a rocky path toward… she didn’t even know. They finally came to the top of a hill and were in a clearing. She could hear waves battering the shore and the sound was coming from beneath them… they were on a cliff. A very high cliff that she had seen before but not ever in person. What was going on?

“Abbie, you have to do this. It’s the only way to escape,” Crane said. He held onto her hand as he pulled them closer to the edge.

“What is this? Have you brought me all this way to kill me? There has to be a better way to get rid of that stupid book than to kill me!” she said, fighting against him. She was tough but for some reason, she couldn’t get her footing to stop him.

“I can’t force you to do it. You have to do it willingly. Like how this all started. You have to go willingly,” he said. She managed to get him to slow down and he looked crazed. His eyes were pleading with her to do this but why? Why would he want her dead? They were to die together. Was he going to jump, too?

She looked at the cliff but felt none of the sadness she had ever felt when she had been looking at the same scene in the book. This was a different feeling. Like if she jumped, she’d find peace. Crane might not be with her but the sadness would be gone. All sadness. She wasn’t sad, though. Only with the book. Maybe if she jumped, the book would be forgotten. Maybe everything would be forgotten.

The sea was calling to her. Pulling her to it. But why? She wanted to know more.

“There is nothing more to know,” Crane said, as if he was reading her mind. “This is how it ends.”

And she believed him. She let go of his hand, her fingertips brushing against his for as long as possible, and walked toward the edge. It had to be. The book had always known. This was the way. And with that, she jumped.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Abbie didn’t hit the water. Didn’t feel her body being torn apart as the waves crashed her into the rocky walls of the cliff. Didn’t feel anything for the longest time. It was like being lost between here and there. Floating… and lost.

“Is she… what’s happening?” the voice was unfamiliar. But someone was holding her. The hands around her arms trying to shake her back into consciousness were all too familiar.

“Lieutenant! Wake up! Abbie, oh… Abbie… please wake up!”

It was Crane. Crane who had just told her to jump was now pleading with her to wake up. What did he really want from her?

She opened her eyes, ready to yell at him about making up his mind but found herself in a room. A room she had never seen before though it was similar to the archives. But yet, it wasn’t the archives. It was bigger and less personal. Crane was immediately in front of her but he looked… older? His hair was much shorter than the last time she had seen him, receding a bit now. The wrinkles around his eyes were far more pronounced. She could see Jenny hovering behind him, crying. There were a few other people she didn’t recognize at all.

“Jenny? Crane? What’s going on?” Abbie asked. What had that book done this time?

“Oh my God, she’s back!” Jenny cried out and Abbie couldn’t imagine back from where. What was everyone’s problem?

Crane embraced her so tight she could hardly breathe. She couldn’t remember much of anything. They had been visiting Scotland and now she was here… wherever here was.

“Oh, Abbie. I can’t believe it. Abbie…”

“What is happening, Crane? Someone tell me what’s going on,” Abbie asked again.

“You’re back. We found the book to bring you back from the box. It took ten years, but we did it,” he said. Jenny was now kneeling on the floor beside him, pulling her into her arms. The other woman in the room was smiling at all of them.

“You said you were going to find her and you did. You never stopped looking,” the woman said. “I think you searched every book on earth and it worked.”

Abbie was trying to remember everything. She and Crane and the house and their bed and… wait? The box? The box… no. None of this was real after the box? The book brought her out of the box?

Crane stood up so quickly that it made Abbie dizzy. He grabbed a book off of a desk and hurried back toward her. Jenny still had her arms around her shoulders, holding onto her tight.

“This book. Someone sent it to us here in DC a few years ago…”

“DC?”

“Long story. We’ll get to that. But someone sent it and it was all about you… somewhere. Here… look!” Crane said excitedly. He looked as wild as he sounded, his hands flipping from one page to the next. “God’s wounds! The book… you’re no longer alone in the book!”

“I… what?”

“The book has changed. The pictures…. they are all different,” Crane said, puzzled. “The title remains the same… see… it’s still called ‘Hope’ but now the pictures – they show us inside your old house. I’m cooking and we’re… oh!”

He slammed the book shut, looking embarrassed. She smiled at him, reaching out and touching his cheek before touching the book. The book didn’t leave her feeling anything. Not like the way touching him left her feeling. “That’s the life I’ve been living all this time. That life in the book. But you could see something else. How did you ever convince me to jump? How did you figure it out?”

“I had someone draw me into the book. It wasn’t easy and it didn’t always work. I liked to disappear out of the story, it seems. As if it was fighting me from the inside but you kept me there. Brought me back each time you found the book. It’s some sort of reflection. That book really is magnificent dark magic, to be honest. But somehow… it just all worked out. I don’t know how, but with the two of us, it always just works out,” Crane said. Jenny let go of Abbie and now she was in Crane’s arms.

“Wait… what do you mean my old house?”

“Oh, we have a lot to talk about Lieutenant,” he said. Abbie really wasn’t certain if this was real. Maybe the other world had been real. Maybe it didn’t matter what world they were in as long as they were together. “From what I could see in those pictures, we apparently have talked about a lot already. Perhaps we can talk more about that, too? About… us?”

“Yes, Crane. We are definitely going to talk about that and as soon as possible,” Abbie said, pulling him to her for a soft, quick kiss. Everyone in the room fell silent and Crane blushed. “But first, I think you better start telling me about my house.”

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

The End


End file.
